Smalling has been with United long enough to know that any dip from the club is treated as a disaster and says those inside the camp have worked hard to turn their current corner.

He told MUTV after a welcome upturn in form: “United is an easy topic of conversation for all fans and it’s not often that we go into games off the back of two defeats.

“It was down to us players to stand up tall and get a result, and we’re very happy with the win.

“We had a lot of chances in both halves and if it had been five or six I don’t think anyone could have argued. The good thing is we’re getting those chances, similar to the last game, and hopefully we can continue to score them

“With us not having a game in the week, we’d been able to work on a lot of patterns of play and you could see them coming out and finishing with the goals, so we were happy with that.

“We deserved a clean sheet and going down to 10 men makes it that bit more difficult.

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“Last season we picked up a lot of clean sheets and this year we’ve conceded early goals. We need to get back what we’ve done in the last few seasons when we’ve conceded very few goals, like on Sunday.”